[wat0n]

I have no idea if anyone has made the exact chant that October 7 should be repeated.

Yes they have.

The vast majority of protesters have not made any such chant, so if we are going to try and figure out what the protesters mean, it is illogical to focus on a small minority of them.

They were never told to fuck off by the rest, and other protesters have cried similar eliminationist chants.

Most protesters say it means (to copy and paste from @Sherlock Holmes) “a declaration that the people in (former) Palestine will live with same freedoms we take for granted here in the West”.

@Unthinking Majority thinks the protesters are lying.

If the protesters are lying, it would mean they do not really care about the dozens of children dying each day in Gaza or the occupation or the human rights abuses and instead simply hate Jewish people.

Why is this more plausible than assuming protesters have some basic empathy for people living in a situation comparable to Apartheid?

The protesters are, in fact, lying about wanting for Palestinians to just enjoy the same freedoms taken for granted in the West when they allow eliminationist chants in their protests and glorify groups like Hamas or Hezbollah, which do not advocate and do not grant such Western freedoms in the places under rule anyway.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Yet we are somehow supposed to believe those who chant that October 7 should be repeated 10,000 times over don't mean that "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" means that it will be free of Jews.

It's about "who", not "what".

Attempting to discredit all those who are opposed to the Zionist apartheid regime in Israel based on the words of a few vocal protesters is rather desperate, its precisely the kind of generalization that leads to bigotry.

[Unthinking Majority]

This is an inference.

But even if we make the racist assumption that all Palestinians share a bloodthirsty hatred for Jews, it is beyond ridiculous to also assume that every protester also shares the same deep and unreasonable antipathy.

This seems like an ad hominem and unverifiable speculation all rolled up in one.

These are strawmen, I never made any of those arguments so please don't put words in my mouth.

[Sherlock Holmes]

Yes they have.



They were never told to fuck off by the rest, and other protesters have cried similar eliminationist chants.



The protesters are, in fact, lying about wanting for Palestinians to just enjoy the same freedoms taken for granted in the West when they allow eliminationist chants in their protests and glorify groups like Hamas or Hezbollah, which do not advocate and do not grant such Western freedoms in the places under rule anyway.

There we are bigotry, everyone opposed to Zionism is an antisemite, desiring genocide of all Jews, tar everyone with the same brush, every anti Zionist protester is a "liar".

[Unthinking Majority]

Two points, first the purported "meaning" of the phrase is ridiculous, different people interpret it differently. I interpret it as a declaration that the people in (former) Palestine will live with same freedoms we take for granted here in the West. Freedom to walk around neighborhoods without solders stopping them and scrutinizing ID cards, freedom to buy a home and live in it without fear of armed extremists - sorry "settlers" - rampaging and evicting them with the police standing and watching. The reason this phrase is making news is because the Zionist lobby will stop at nothing in order to play the antisemitism card, from the outset of Zionism proper, shortly after WW1 the neo-Zionists have exploited antisemitism, its been an essential part of their strategy for years.

Nonsense, the phrase is pretty clear. If people don't know what it means they might want to do some research before being led like sheep.

If the French in WW2 shouted "From the river to the sea France will be free" who'd seriously argue that that was calling for the genocide of all Germans? ridiculous, utterly stupid non-issue.

Comparing Israel to Nazi occupied France is ridiculous so we can ignore this argument.

The second point is that it's no more wrong to want to destroy neo-Zionism than it was wrong to destroy the Third Reich, which was another ideology based in racial supremacy and a divine right to seize territory and build an Aryan based greater Germany.

[Sherlock Holmes]

The institutionalized neo-Zionism that now permeates Israeli society, media, press and education is bringing nothing but misery to Jews and non-Jews alike. It is a cancer, nothing good has ever come of it and it must be eliminated as was Third Reich ideology, as was South African apartheid, even Jews are sick and tired of the hell hole that is Israel today:

[wat0n]

Attempting to discredit all those who are opposed to the Zionist apartheid regime in Israel based on the words of a few vocal protesters is rather desperate, its precisely the kind of generalization that leads to bigotry.

So where are the protest organizers disassociating from these people?

If anything, they often get support.

We've heard all too many times of these same people saying good things about October 7 with no pushback at all from the left.

There we are bigotry, everyone opposed to Zionism is an antisemite, desiring genocide of all Jews, tar everyone with the same brush, every anti Zionist protester is a "liar".

Gee, then maybe kick those who want that from your protest and stop covering for them?

Allow me to remind you that Trump's "very fine people on both sides" regarding Charlottesville has not been forgotten. That's the standard that was set, and the protesters don't meet it.

[Unthinking Majority]

@Unthinking Majority thinks the protesters are lying.

Don't put words in my mouth. I said they're either lying or are naive and uneducated as to the meaning of the words.

It's a chant to destroy Zionism and take all the land that Israel has. Yes there are naive and ignorant but well- meaning protestors being led in the chant by antizionists who just want peace and freedom in West Bank who think it means something else.

[Sherlock Holmes]

So where are the protest organizers disassociating from these people?

If anything, they often get support.

We've heard all too many times of these same people saying good things about October 7 with no pushback at all from the left.

Gee, then maybe kick those who want that from your protest and stop covering for them?

Allow me to remind you that Trump's "very fine people on both sides" regarding Charlottesville has not been forgotten. That's the standard that was set, and the protesters don't meet it.

The best way to stop the protests and to discourage sporadic expressions of antisemitism at these protests is to listen to what the protesters are saying. Listen to what the UN is saying, listen to what UNHCR is saying, listen to what Amnesty International is saying, listen to what Human Rights watch is saying, listen to what Orthodox Jews are saying and the ICC and the ICJ and even listen to what B'Tselem in Israel is saying.

A regime cannot behave like a reincarnated Third Reich or South Africa and not expect to be challenged and resisted. Without the United States propping up the disgusting regime and its abhorrent ideology, Israel would implode. People like you who are decrying all this protesting should in fact join them, join the voices inside Israel to unseat Netanyahu and the warped government and fix what is broken, not keep pretending everything is the fault of others.

[wat0n]

The best way to stop the protests and to discourage sporadic expressions of antisemitism at these protests is to listen to what the protesters are saying. Listen to what the UN is saying, listen to what UNHCR is saying, listen to what Amnesty International is saying, listen to what Human Rights watch is saying, listen to what Orthodox Jews are saying and the ICC and the ICJ and even listen to what B'Tselem in Israel is saying.

A regime cannot behave like a reincarnated Third Reich or South Africa and not expect to be challenged and resisted. Without the United States propping up the disgusting regime and its abhorrent ideology, Israel would implode. People like you who are decrying all this protesting should in fact join them, join the voices inside Israel to unseat Netanyahu and the warped government and fix what is broken, not keep pretending everything is the fault of others.

Should we have listened to those at Charlottesville?

[Sherlock Holmes]

Don't put words in my mouth. I said they're either lying or are naive and uneducated as to the meaning of the words.

It's a chant to destroy Zionism and take all the land that Israel has. Yes there are naive and ignorant but well- meaning protestors being led in the chant by antizionists who just want peace and freedom in West Bank who think it means something else.

People used to say this about civil rights marches, the chants of equality for all was really a call for blacks to take everything from the whites. That is exactly the kind of rhetoric that was all over the place before and during the civil rights upheaval.

I'd also lose the Frank Zappa avatar too and replace it with this one:

[Sherlock Holmes]

Should we have listened to those at Charlottesville?

Be specific.

[Sherlock Holmes]

This is the same klutz who decided to cosplay in an IDF uniform recently!

I'd be interested in examples of elected US members who speak the same way about destroying the residents of Israel, its infrastructure, level everything, so please do post these if you have any. All genocide like language used so far by elected members seems to be exclusively from Zionists.

[wat0n]

Be specific.

What did they want?

[Pants-of-dog]

These are strawmen, I never made any of those arguments so please don't put words in my mouth.

If you do not think they are liars, then you think they are stupid.

This is unverifiable speculation and an ad hominem rolled up in one.

[QatzelOk]

...If there were no settlements, there would be little friction between Israelis and Palestinians on a daily basis. There would be little need for checkpoints - although there would be an exception, like having checkpoints close to Israeli military bases - and also less violence in general. Wars like the one in 2014 wouldn't have happened at all.

This would not solve the conflict on its own, but would definitely make it easier to solve and manage.

Yes, but without settlements, there wouldn't be any opportunity for Israel's many criminals to make a fast buck selling land they stole from helpless people, and they often sell this stolen land to armed religious crazies.

From their point of view: What good is conquering Palestine if you can't make a fast buck?

Or do you think that Israel really is the Holy LandTM? When visitors come back to Montreal, they never have pictures of all the angels playing harps sitting on low-flying clouds. They don't mention seeing people walking on water or doing miracles. If they visit today, they will just see an ongoing genocide and lots of barbed wire and propaganda.

On the other hand, the Crusades of the Middle Ages reported angel-sightings. Those earlier Crusades were also provoked by the lies of the richest institutions on Earth at the time (the Catholic Church) whereas today, our richest organizations are arms dealers and banksters.

So only the CEOs have changed from one Crusade to the next.

Let's all hope this is the last Crusade.

[wat0n]

Yes, but without settlements, there wouldn't be any opportunity for Israel's many criminals to make a fast buck selling land they stole from helpless people, and they often sell this stolen land to armed religious crazies.

From their point of view: What good is conquering Palestine if you can't make a fast buck?

Or do you think that Israel really is the Holy LandTM? When visitors come back to Montreal, they never have pictures of all the angels playing harps sitting on low-flying clouds. They don't mention seeing people walking on water or doing miracles. If they visit today, they will just see an ongoing genocide and lots of barbed wire and propaganda.

On the other hand, the Crusades of the Middle Ages reported angel-sightings. Those earlier Crusades were also provoked by the lies of the richest institutions on Earth at the time (the Catholic Church) whereas today, our richest organizations are arms dealers and banksters.

So only the CEOs have changed from one Crusade to the next.

Let's all hope this is the last Crusade.

The settlements are not profitable overall either. They're quite expensive to maintain.

[Sherlock Holmes]

The settlements are not profitable overall either. They're quite expensive to maintain.

Not when Israel gets a free handout of billions of dollars every year from the US taxpayer, talk about socialism!

[Sherlock Holmes]

Comparing Israel to Nazi occupied France is ridiculous so we can ignore this argument.

I wasn't comparing Israel to Nazi occupied France, I was comparing Nazi occupied France to Zionist occupied Palestinian territory.

Therefore I was comparing Zionist Israel (the occupier today) to the Nazi Third Reich (the occupier in 1940).

[Deutschmania]

As the repressive reactionaries , Democrats and Republicans alike , clamp down on free expression , and civil rights , a number of colleges have begun negotiations .

Since 7 October, commentators have been ringing the alarm that a growing protest movement in solidarity with Palestine signals not just the end of a “golden age” for American Jews – as Franklin Foer recently put it in the Atlantic – but for American liberal democracy itself.

As Foer wrote, the “surge of antisemitism is a symptom of the decay of democratic habits, a leading indicator of rising authoritarianism”. Writing before the start of the encampments, he noted that Columbia was “a graphic example of the collapse of the liberalism that had insulated American Jews: it is a microcosm of a society that has lost its capacity to express disagreements without resorting to animus”. Meanwhile, on CNN, the anchor Dana Bash invoked 1930s Europe – “and I do not say that lightly … the fear among American Jews is palpable right now”.

There is no doubt that many Jewish students – especially those raised to believe that their Jewish identity is indivisible from the political ideology of Zionism – feel uncomfortable, or that many of them feel ostracized by their peers. But their discomfort has justified a powerful attack on academic freedom and first amendment rights that long predates the student encampments – part of a longstanding rightwing project to curb speech and reshape the public sphere.

Foer and Bash are right that American democracy is imperiled. But as the draconian crackdown on non-violent student protests makes clear, accusations of antisemitism are not themselves evidence of liberal decline, but rather the tip of the spear in a frightening illiberal project serving the agenda of an emboldened, autocratic right wing.

The months since 7 October have seen shocking attacks on freedom of expression and assembly on campus. Even before the stunning display of police brutality in recent weeks, campuses have been home to canceled speakers and events, arbitrary disciplinary hearings, and outright censorship. The University of Southern California has canceled its entire commencement ceremony rather than let its valedictorian, Asna Tabassum, deliver a message of Palestine solidarity in her speech. Universities have suspended chapters of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and Jewish Voice for Peace, in decisions that PEN America has said are “united by a degree of opacity, in that university leaders have not been fully forthcoming in delineating how these student groups broke campus rules, or how the decision to suspend them was reached”.

These curtailments of civil liberties, enacted in the service of “protecting Jewish students”, are not now and will not be confined to Palestine-related speech. The recent history of suppression of Palestine activism suggests that tactics employed by legislatures, universities, and other institutions will soon pop up elsewhere.

The pro-Palestine movement has provided cover for the right to expand its attack on protest
Anti-boycott laws – targeting the non-violent tactic of boycott when applied to the state of Israel – exist in 38 states, under the argument that such boycotts constitute antisemitism. In the past few years, this tactic has spread to protect other causes beloved by the right. Now, several states have laws on the books that prohibit the government from doing business with groups or individuals who are boycotting fossil fuels or the gun industry. “They’re shrinking the space for public debate and action on some of the most important issues of our time,” Meera Shah, a senior staff attorney at Palestine Legal, told Jewish Currents in 2022, underscoring why “it’s so dangerous to permit this kind of Palestine exception to speech”. The pro-Palestine movement has also provided cover for the right to expand its attack on protest – a project advanced significantly after the Black Lives Matter protests in 2020. Building on laws that allow motorists to hit protesters with their cars, and bar convicted protesters from holding state employment or receiving public benefits, GOP lawmakers have introduced new legislation pinned to the wave of pro-Palestine protests since 7 October. In March, Senator Tom Cotton introduced the “Stop Pro-Terrorist Riots Now Act”, to “crack down on pro-Hamas riots”, increasing punishments for rioting and providing mandatory sentences for anyone committing violence as part of a riot. Senators Marsha Blackburn and Thom Tillis have introduced legislation making it a federal crime to block roads or highways, a move they said was in “direct response to radical tactics of pro-Palestinian protesters who have intentionally blocked roads and highways across the country”.

In a tactic familiar from the post-9/11 landscape, GOP lawmakers and civil society leaders from groups like the ADL and the Brandeis Center have endeavored to paint student protesters and groups as “terrorists”. This is bad news for activists across the country: a 2024 report by the Center for Constitutional Rights details how “core features” of US antiterrorism law, “driven by anti-Palestinian agendas”, were “expanded and ‘brought home’ to repress other protest movements”, including the Black Lives Matter movement and the protests against the “Cop City” Atlanta police training center. As early as next week, the Senate could vote on a bill designed to penalize criticism of Israel by suspending tax-exempt status for “terrorist supporting organizations” – which Lara Friedman, president of the Foundation for Middle East Peace, said would “dispense with the due process” and empower “a single US official to act as prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner of [American] orgs whose viewpoints that official disagrees with”.

Of course, some student groups have adopted inflammatory rhetoric, reminiscent of some anti-Vietnam war campus protesters’ adoption of the Viet Cong flag. Many observers have referenced a toolkit released by National SJP in the days after 7 October affirming their support for armed struggle. But these are political opinions that constitute protected political speech. “Students’ independent political rhetoric is not material support for terrorism,” Hina Shamsi, director of the National Security Project at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), told Jewish Currents in November. “A blanket call to investigate every chapter of a pro-Palestinian student group for material support – without even an attempt to cite evidence – is unwarranted, wrong, and dangerous.”
Alongside this effort to tar protest as terrorism, the right is seizing on the emotions inflamed by Israel’s war to make headway in a longstanding offensive on education. Over the past several years, the GOP has sought to meddle in the academic freedom of universities, which they allege are indoctrinating students into “woke”, leftwing ideology. This is perhaps most dramatic in Florida, where, in a bid to control access to history and information, Governor Ron DeSantis has all but remade the public liberal arts college New College in his image, and has introduced the Stop Woke Act, curtailing what teachers can teach on topics of race and gender. Republicans have also taken aim nationally at diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) initiatives, introducing more than 30 bills targeting DEI funding, practices, and promotion at schools. Nine have been signed into law – efforts that the ACLU says “represent yet another attempt to re-whitewash America’s history of racial subjugation, and to reverse efforts to pursue racial justice”.

The moral panic around antisemitism has been a useful vehicle to further the campaign against DEI, as congressional hearings on antisemitism since 7 Octoberhave made clear. “Evidence shows that campus DEI bureaucracies play a major role in propagating the spread of antisemitism,” said the US representative Burgess Owens at a November hearing. “It is a dirty little secret at the heart to DEI.”

Though these attacks on academic freedom and free speech on campus have been spearheaded by the right wing, under the guise of “fighting antisemitism”, Democrats are playing along. Last week, a bipartisan House vote affirmed the Antisemitism Awareness Act, which would codify the controversial International Holocaust Remembrace Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism for the purpose of campus harassment investigations. According to the ACLU, the adoption of this “overbroad” definition “could result in colleges and universities suppressing a wide variety of speech critical of Israel or in support of Palestinian rights in an effort to avoid investigations by the Department [of Education] and the potential loss of funding.” At the City University of New York (Cuny), faculty have been whispering for months about how the Democratic governor Kathy Hochul’s independent review into the school’s policies on antisemitism and discrimination has chilled speech and could feed calls to defund Cuny from Republican lawmakers at the state and federal level. This effort to defund higher education is part of a broader GOP plan to punish universities, as the Republican US representative Jim Banks admitted in a Zoom call with business leaders leaked to CNBC. “The hearing was the first step,” he said, in reference to the congressional hearings grilling college presidents about antisemitism allegations on their campuses.Private universities will not be immune from these repressive headwinds, if the April testimony of Columbia’s president, Minouche Shafik, before Congress was any indication. Rather than stand up for academic freedom, Shafik obliged GOP lawmakers’ agendas, suggesting she would meddle in departmental appointments, investigate and punish protected speech, and cordon off protest, all in the name of protecting Jewish students. A day later, she invited police to Columbia’s campus to arrest more than 100 students who had been peacefully protesting.

To be clear, all of the most serious violent attacks since October have been on Palestinians and their supporters. In Chicago, a six-year-old Palestinian American was killed and his mother injured in a stabbing attack by their landlord. In Vermont, three Palestinian students were shot while wearing keffiyehs and speaking Arabic; one is permanently paralyzed. At Stanford, an Arab Muslim student was targeted in a hit-and-run after a Palestine solidarity protest. Just this week, a cousin of the extremist Jewish leader Meir Kahane allegedly rammed protesters with his car outside the home of a Columbia trustee. And last week at UCLA, 25 students were hospitalized after an attack by a Zionist mob with wooden planks, fireworks, and pepper spray.

Yet there is no discourse in Washington suggesting that Palestinians are unsafe in the United States, or that pro-Israel supporters are “genocidal” – and no comparable rush to legislate. Liberals, particularly older ones, have long scolded college students for their illiberalism, their “safe spaces”, and their low tolerance for discomfort and disagreement. But to watch the full-throated support for the violent repression of student activism resounding in the media, in university administrations, and at every level of government these past several weeks is to witness an astounding repudiation of our civil liberties on account of their discomfort. It’s worth remembering that the Vietnam anti-war protests were also unpopular at the time – three-quarters of the American public opposed them, and the country elected a racist, criminal president, Richard Nixon, in part to restore “law and order”.


Liberals know there is an autocratic strain spreading across this country – they identify it in Trump’s efforts to steal the election, or DeSantis’s attacks on history. Come November, Trump could return to office, and the erosions in our civil liberties we have written into law and practice in these months will be there for his use. But it’s worth remembering that the crackdowns on our first amendment rights over the last several weeks have happened under a Democratic president, in defense of a US-funded war that enjoys bipartisan support in Congress, if not among a changing Democratic party base.

As the White House repeatedly accuses the students of antisemitism, in a tacit endorsement of the police swarming university campuses, it’s worth taking the students’ word for why they’re there in the first place: Biden’s disastrous foreign policy, in which every opportunity for Israeli accountability has been spurned, has turned Gaza into a mass grave – off the charts compared with any other contemporary conflict by every metric – and brought the entire Middle East to the brink of all-out regional war.

I believe history will vindicate these students and their call for Palestinian liberation and an end to US complicity in a brutal, futile Israeli war. But even if you disagree, it’s clear that protecting them is also an investment in the protection of our fundamental liberties. The Guardian

Before a student presentation at Friday’s board meeting of the University of Minnesota regents, the chair reminded the crowd, “Our role as a university is to educate, support and create forums for constructive dialogue and mutual understanding.”

Minutes later, dialogue commenced on one of the most inflammatory issues facing universities across the country: whether they should divest from Israel.

“An educational institution should not be funding crimes against humanity,” a speaker identified as Lucia Santos Stern — who self-identified as an “Afro-Caribbean Jewish student” — told the board. Stern was the sole Jewish representative among the four speakers from the UMN Divest Coalition, and insisted that “anti-Zionist Jewish student leaders” should be involved in any divestment discussions. Representatives of Hillel then took the floor.

Following the divestment coalition’s presentation, which also included a representative from Students for Justice in Palestine, one regent thanked them “for being here and for the work that you’re doing and for being brave and courageous.”

Board chair Janie Mayeron told them, “We have heard your message loud and clear.”

Minnesota appears to be the first U.S. school with a major Jewish population to hold a debate on divestment in response to the demands of students protesting Israel’s conduct in the war in Gaza. That debate has raged on quads, in student newspapers and at student government meetings for years.

Now, in Minnesota, it had been brought directly to the group with the power to adjudicate such a request: the school’s regents. The meeting served as a preview of the direction such divestment discussions could soon take at other schools — a direction mainstream Jewish groups find deeply concerning.

“The University’s capitulation sends a message that students who violate UofM policy, openly celebrate violence, and shut down campus are rewarded with time before the Regents and ‘regular meetings moving forward’ with the President’s office,” the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota & the Dakotas said in an earlier statement condemning the Minnesota agreement. “By contrast, students targeted by antisemitism are apparently supposed to suffer silently, while their University appeases those very same activists who demonize Jews and Israelis.”

The local JCRC characterized the encampment’s participants as largely antisemitic, calling them “pro-Hamas,” and said the university was allowing them to menace Jewish students with impunity. It was an echo of how other Jewish groups, including the Anti-Defamation League and various Jewish campus alumni groups, have defined the encampment movement. These voices have largely warned universities to more forcefully discipline the protesters, not make deals with them.

Yet the deals have come. Over the past week, Brown University and several other schools including Northwestern, Rutgers and, more recently, Middlebury College and the University of California, Riverside have convinced their encampments to pack up peacefully in exchange for some form of public debate or review on the question of divestment, in addition to other concessions.

In New York, the board of trustees of the Union Theological Seminary, a progressive Christian institution affiliated with Columbia University and across the street from the flagship Conservative Jewish seminary, endorsed a plan to divest from “companies profiting from war in Palestine/Israel” on Thursday — a notable step given Columbia’s position at the epicenter of the student pro-Palestinian protest movement.

Amid such negotiations, some university leaders have taken Jewish concerns into account: This week the president of Vassar College, after striking a deal with protesters, privately emailed a group of Jewish alumni to assure them the college had not endorsed any movement to boycott Israel.

Divestment campaigns have already met success overseas: Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland, this week made a specific promise to its encampment to divest from Israeli companies, while the University of Barcelona in Spain also voted to advance a similar divestment request.

Minnesota’s agreement was the quickest payoff for stateside student protesters. While Brown promised a formal vote on divestment, that vote won’t occur until October.

In Minneapolis, by contrast, student representatives from the UMN Divest Coalition were allowed to make a formal presentation at Friday’s regents’ meeting in exchange for peacefully dismantling their pro-Palestinian encampment on campus last week.

But while Brown will hold a vote, Minnesota’s regents did not actually weigh a divestment proposal Friday, and did not give a firm date for when such a vote would happen, if ever. In its disclosure forms, Minnesota claimed that less than 1% of its endowment is invested in companies tied to Israel. The deals with protesters are one of several strategies university administrations have employed to stem the encampment movement. Other stateside university presidents, including Ben Sasse, the former Republican senator who now heads the University of Florida, have flat-out rejected the possibility of negotiating. At Harvard on Friday, protesters still in their encampments were reportedly placed on an involuntary leave of absence.

Many other colleges have asked local law enforcement to intervene, a strategy that has led to more than 2,500 arrests to date, including nine from Minnesota’s encampment prior to the agreement. Dozens more protesters were arrested Friday morning at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Pennsylvania, whose encampments were both raided by police while the UMN regents were meeting (the MIT Jewish Alliance, an alumni group formed after Oct. 7, praised the arrests in a statement to JTA).

Such arrests have faced massive public blowback outside the Jewish community. On Thursday, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Colson Whitehead announced he had withdrawn as the University of Massachusetts-Amherst’s commencement speaker over his objections to the arrests of protesters on that campus.

The agreements are generally framed as an attempt to resolve the issue more peaceably. Yet those who make agreements have also faced blowback. Northwestern’s Jewish president Michael Schill was pilloried by Jewish communal leaders who have called for an end to the encampments, including the ADL’s CEO Jonathan Greenblatt, for making a deal at all Schill’s campus antisemitism taskforce also disbanded after its Jewish members complained that they weren’t consulted on the deal.

That criticism has also come in Minnesota, where Jews pointed out that the encampments had visible chalk messages reading “Victory To Al-Aqsa Flood” (a reference to Hamas’ name for the Oct. 7 attacks) and “Globalize the Intifada.”

The JCRC encouraged supporters of Israel to attend Friday’s meeting. However, during the initial public comment period preceding the formal presentations, only supporters of divestment spoke — including other self-identified anti-Zionist Jews, as well as a faculty member who has previously denied that Hamas committed rape during its Oct. 7 attacks.

Jeff Ettinger, UMN’s interim president, said during the meeting that negotiations with the encampment were conducted in good faith and “grounded in listening, learning and respect, and that was instrumental in reaching this mutual understanding.”

He added that he had also met with the leaders of four Jewish campus groups — Hillel, Chabad and the Jewish fraternities Alpha Epsilon Pi and Sigma Alpha Mu — before concluding that “there is far more work for us to do” and condemning both antisemitism and Islamophobia on campus.

However, representatives from those Jewish groups had told TC Jewfolk, a local Jewish news site, that they were disappointed in their meetings with the administration. At the regents meeting, the pro-divestment presentations were immediately followed by two student leaders from Hillel. One of them, incoming Hillel student president Charlie Mahoney, urged the board, “Investing in Israelis and Palestinians can be more potent than divesting.”

After the divestment coalition spoke Friday, the Hillel leaders’ remarks largely focused on what they said was a “scary” campus atmosphere for Jews and a history of campus pro-Palestinian groups calling for divestment from Israel while harassing Jewish students and not engaging in meaningful dialogue.

“UMN Divest has done little more than inflame our campus, pit minority groups and friends against one another, and create a toxic environment that no longer feels safe for many students,” Alex Stewart, MN Hillel’s current student president, said. She added that Jewish students have felt “marginalized.”

“We didn’t want to fight,” Mahoney told the regents. “We didn’t want to defend our identities for an audience. We didn’t want to have to explain the Jewish connection to Israel and how singling out Israel for condemnation feels antisemitic. And we didn’t want to give other groups on campus further reason to hate or fear Jews.”

Mayeron reminded the crowd that the regents would not be making any decisions on divestment that day, and would instead continue to seek input from “a variety of stakeholders.”

But the mere appearance of a formal debate on the topic already represented a huge shift from how the vast majority of American universities have dealt with divestment requests in the past.

And it wasn’t the only issue of concern to Jews that came up at the meeting. Immediately following the divestment presentations, the regents discussed whether to rename a university building that bears the name of an antisemite, ultimately deciding to wait until June to hold a formal vote on the renaming.

“We approach issues passionately,” Mayeron stated at one point. “But we can do it with respect and civility.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency